St. Joseph’s projects chosen for innovation awards
Three final-year projects by students of St. Joseph’s College of Engineering have been recognised for their innovative merit and chosen for a national award conferred annually by the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE).
INAE was founded in 1987 with the aim of promoting and advancing the practice of engineering and technology. Student project awards were instituted by the Academy to identify creative and innovative projects undertaken by students and give early recognition and incentives to them.
The three awards which will be conferred at the Academy’s annual function to be held on December 17, 2009, at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, recognises innovation across diverse engineering streams.
While Nelvin Johny and Abel K. Mathew, Mechanical engineering pass-outs, designed a rotary valve engine which improves a standard bike engine’s efficiency by 15-18 per cent; V. Aishwarya Vedham and S. Priyadharshini, Instrumentation engineering graduates, designed and implemented a PLC-based load management system which helps to monitor and reduce power consumption.
The load management system, especially designed for academic institutions, employs an algorithm which mirrors the college schedule. During lab timings, power in the lecture halls and classrooms are automatically cut off.
Similarly, lunch breaks and final class hour are taken into account and power is cut off accordingly.
“During our testing, we were able to bring down power utilisation by as much as 40 per cent,” says Aishwarya.
The third project chosen for the award was undertaken by a group of Electronics engineering students and the idea behind it is to prevent mortality due to sudden infant death syndrome.
Despite the award and the recognition, B. Babu Manoharan, Director, St. Joseph’s College of Engineering, said that more participation and incentives, both from the government and the industry, was required to encourage budding innovators.
AJAI SREEVATSAN
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